What is truly shameful is that Miura has his name attached to this travesty. He was a script supervisor (if i recall correctly) on the 97 anime, and that came out pretty good. He distanced himself from the movies, and those were unwatchable. So why is he involved this time? He's even promoting it. His role is most likely very small, but if he's attached, i bet he at least saw some form of a script(s). That makes his complicity very disappointing.

Let's be real here, his name is attached no matter what he does. He's the author. And he's hardly promoting it beyond his "please enjoy the anime" comment in this week's Young Animal, which is about as standard and non-committal as you can get in Japan.

Anyway, if we want to hope beyond reason, I was talking to Gobolatula earlier about what to expect for the next episodes and told him that maybe Miura saw what they had early on in the production and decided to get involved to salvage the mess. Obviously what was already done couldn't be changed, but maybe the later parts will be less terrible as a result.

TricksieThiefsie

Let's be real here, his name is attached no matter what he does. He's the author. And he's hardly promoting it beyond his "please enjoy the anime" comment in this week's Young Animal, which is about as standard and non-committal as you can get in Japan.

Anyway, if we want to hope beyond reason, I was talking to Gobolatula earlier about what to expect for the next episodes and told him that maybe Miura saw what they had early on in the production and decided to get involved to salvage the mess. Obviously what was already done couldn't be changed, but maybe the later parts will be less terrible as a result.

For better or worse, that's just not his personality.

I think we can actually blame Miura. In the end he decides if something like that exists or not and I dont believe he is not aware of it at all. Even if not, that's a bad thing too, what kind of an artist doesn't follow adaptations to his original work?

I can understand the game, maybe he likes Musou genre and thinks it fits Berserk. But to allow this anime to exist - I dont understand what he was thinking.

@ NightCrawler/ Aazealh The creator of Hyouge Mono had his credit changed from "original story" to "original concept" during the animeīs early run and Hirohiko Araki apparently forbid the dvd release of the "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood" movie (!!!) but yeah, Miura is a nice man. Such (somewhat justifiable) stunts would never fly with him. And Alan Moore, well. He is a genius, if i forget a lot of his works from the last decade, but he is as much a bane to the US comic industry as he used to be a blessing. Noone wins if the loudest media voice in the industry is constantly trying to bury it. He refused millions from the film side but he is still cashing his comic revenue checks... .PS: V for Vendetta and Watchmen are good films. Even From Hell is alright.

I think we can actually blame Miura. In the end he decides if something like that exists or not and I dont believe he is not aware of it at all. Even if not, that's a bad thing too, what kind of an artist doesn't follow adaptations to his original work? I can understand the game, maybe he likes Musou genre and thinks it fits Berserk. But to allow this anime to exist - I dont understand what he was thinking.

He certainly bears some responsability, but I find it hard to cast blame when we don't actually know how it went down. The announcement that the "entire series" would be adapted was made when the movie project was officially revealed. Could Miura have unilateraly cancelled it after the movies? How much money has Hakusensha invested in it and could they realistically back out of it? I'm not privy to what went on behind the scenes, so I'm not ready to judge who did or didn't do what they should have.

Aazealh, what do you think Miuras opinion of this anime is? Do you think he enjoys it for what it is or do you feel he probably rejects it, but keeps it to himself?

I don't know man. Right now my guess would be that he disapproves of it, but swallows his pride because of his extreme modesty and of the way Japanese culture and society works. But he might also consider that it's better to have those side projects than to not have them, even if only in terms of mindshare, and that their low quality will not reflect on the manga itself.

I feel like they're depicting Kenshiro (from Hokuto no Ken) instead of Guts. In Japanese, there's a word pronounced "fukashi". It's typically used for a man who does everything in an overly dramatic fashion, which is not how Guts is at all.

Didn't think of Kenshiro but totally sharing the sentiment. The cliche soundtrack/bgms adds another layer to it

Watched it again with my fiance, who begrudgingly watched the Golden Age trilogy some time ago (it's the only way I can get them to experience Berserk). Thought it would be fun to share a couple comments they made while watching:

Quote

The animation looks different. I don't like it.Everything looks like it's been scribbled on.Ooh, those trees! I can't wait for Christmas!

Captured the essence of the experience well, I thought. Anyway, looks like I'll be the only one watching in my household from now on despite their initial commitment to following me down this shithole.

I have said my peace on ep.1 but one question remains on my mind. Next week is when the possessed horse will show up, right? GEMBA already failed to animate a tree, of all things, so how is that supposed to work?An animeīs animation quality usually drops over time too. Not that any of that is the root of the problems the show faces.

At this point I feel like loyal fans should try their best to stop this butchery from going even further. For the love of all the imaginary gods don't support the project in any way or form. It's about the name now!!!!

I can't bring myself to blame Miura so much as feel bad for him. As Aaz pointed out, we don't know how big the machine is, or how much control he really has over it. It's easy to think he could have taken better offers, but there's business interests to consider and those better quality offers may not have existed at all, and it's undoubtedly better for the manga's profile and therefore its benefactors to have a series associated with it. The shame of it is that all Berserk really needs is an unremarkable, straightforward adaptation, like Dragon Ball fucking Z minus the stalling filler. Which the '97 anime largely was save for a few shortcuts probably based mostly on time and budget constraints. It's sad that it appears such a small, unremarkable adaptation is the best we'll ever get because everything since has just been remarkably bad, and seemingly getting worse. I hope the "Miura intervenes theory" comes to pass, but I'm sure not expecting it.

On a side note, I think auteurs like Moore doth protest too much, and are largely bitter their own big Hollywood dreams didn't pan out, so they go the holier than thou route. Like, they thought they were going to sell out and run the machine, but instead get sold out and chewed up by it so they're suddenly paragons of integrity that hate all that shit anyway. I feel like the best high profile example of an author productively cooperating with an adaptation of their work was George RR Martin with Game of Thrones, even if that may have become strained. To bring it back around, if Miura did have some part in making this bed, now he's lying in it.

It's a sad state of affairs when the Golden Age movies blow this out of the water. As much as they omitted and the liberties they took, it still felt like Berserk, and had the right style and tone between the art and music.

And I'm the type of guy that doesn't need an adaptation to 100% conform to the source material. I can get behind shortening or abridging a story for pacing or timing contrainsts as long as it's done well. And like I said above, parts of this were clever like bringing Isidro in with the bandits. Introducing Schierke alongside the H.I.C.K.s as they learn about the Eclipse. Totally fine with this stuff to introduce all our main players. The Brand episode was mostly handled well.

But the rest? Horribly done. The tree was ridiculously shoe horned in and for almost no point. As if that was the most memorable part of the Black Swordsman period. It's just tacked on to the skeleton fight. Guts also apparently starts a bar fight because he wants water and whiskey and didn't want to wait in line. What? And we don't even get a sense of what Guts is off doing. He seems to be just wandering around without any type of quest for revenge. He's a hardcore camper who beats the shit out of anyone between him and his rabbit dinners. And the H.I.C.K.s are after this heavily armed hitch hiker for... reasons.

I cannot stress enough how fucking awful the music is in this it completely kills it for me. If you thought the piano during the Eclipse was bad, wait until you get a load of this power guitar and bastardized chopped up movie score in in appropriate places. It's like they had a 13 year old music director who just tried to make it 'badass.'

The sound design was equally bad. The same CLANG noise over and over, even used when the sword isn't hitting skeletons. I swear there where skeletons hitting trees and making a clang noise. If this is what we can expect from fight scenes, we better expect disappointment. At least the Golden Age gave us halfway decent battles without turning Guts into some Dragon Ball Z character cutting through time and space with his strikes.

Plenty of people are mentioning the art as horrible, and while it's not great, that doesn't bother me as much as what they are doing to the story and characters. I can take subpar art any day as long as you tell a good story. But it just adds insult to injury when the adaptation is this bad and they animate it like a pachinko game with 'edgy' sketch filters on to hide their laziness.

Maybe we can hope for them to improve from here on out if they just used this clumsy episode to stitch the Golden Age to the Conviction Arc. That would be unfortunate but not horrible. Lets just hope 9 episodes to deal with the Holy Iron Chain Knights, the Tower and Mozgus will be enough, and not feel like this. But I have low expectations.

It's a shame because from what I heard MAPPA planned on adapting more old manga like Ushio to Tora in the future, and given how well they handled this series they could have been the first studio to give us the first truly great Berserk anime (fun fact: they even adapted the first three seasons of Teekyu before Millepensee took over).

@GriffithRobert Kirkman and especially Mark Millar are my prime example of being comic guys who succeeded inside the adaption system beyond reason. The Walking Dead comic (10/10) is miles better then the show (6/10) i finally dropped but we are here for Berserk.

I suspect the Berserk Saga project exists to only lure in foreign investors by creating online buzz. It just canīt die after all! The half related Berserk Musou (not a fan but it is suddenly much more appealing, if the Vita version come to the EU) looks like a genuine passion project to get a young Japanese gamer demographic to check the wider IP out. The endless Souls comparisons, some justified, some not, got the manga a lot of exposure! That investment or the shocking Casca pre-order skin i get.The new anime though. I donīt know. You have to invest money to make more money and i donīt see any of that. Itīs the lack of any passion that strikes me. The basic comprehension of how editing, sounds anything or even characterization work are lost on this team. I can welcome an ugly duckling in my life but what i see is the cheapest sizzle real money can buy. I fear that try 2 isnīt the last we see of the decade long project...

The anime though managed to make me excited for the next manga episode like never before.

From a die-hard fan perspective, having nothing would have been better than having this

(Im probably needlessly nitpicking your words here just to start a conversation but anyways...) I never thought I'd say this but I honestly think you're being too kind, I certainly don't think you have to be a die-hard fan to have that particular opinion. I mean you'd think that the least they could've done would turn out "decent" but this is beyond fuckin horrible (and the fucked up thing here is that I seriously don't think it would be that hard to make an acceptable adaptation, the manga itself would basically work a perfect storyboard, in other words it's practically served on a fuckin silver platter for them, but noooo). Furthermore I bet that opinion would still be relevant even if you're not even a Berserk reader.

Smart guy, it gives me some hope in humanity. Now that I think about it though, I wonder why he cares for the manga fan base at all... Well, might be that he just figured that the manga can't possibly be THAT bad if its among the most popular seinen manga out there... Would be nice if everyone else would come to the same conclusion. Sadly I'd guess that's just not reality. And it's that very consequence I hate the most about this mess, misrepresentation. I try not to think about it, but occasionally that very thought consumes my mind and I feel like crying blood.

I think the most difficult thing about this new series is being a die hard fan and also knowing a few people who are ignorant to manga. 2 friends of mine found the first episode and professed how much they enjoyed it. I found myself holding back criticism, but told them they needed to check the manga out as the anime is definitely not doing it justice.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the violins and the brand segment of the episode (minus the god damned tree!) the rest was rather ugh, nooooooo! -vader

It's even worse after a second viewing, I only made it halfway through this time. At least people who read the manga after watching this are in for a treat! And hopefully they do...

Honestly, the worst part of these bad adaptations is that people who find them terrible won't be interested in the source material, which is understandable. And chances are, if someone loved this first episode, when they decide to read the manga they're gonna be disappointed, it's not like their beloved anime at all. So everybody loses.

I try not to think about it, but occasionally that very thought consumes my mind and I feel like crying blood. (I've already had day dream scenarios where I arrange a bombing of their studios and shit like that, gets me through the day )

I can't bring myself to blame Miura so much as feel bad for him. As Aaz pointed out, we don't know how big the machine is, or how much control he really has over it. It's easy to think he could have taken better offers, but there's business interests to consider and those better quality offers may not have existed at all,

The shame of it is that all Berserk really needs is an unremarkable, straightforward adaptation, like Dragon Ball fucking Z minus the stalling filler.

Exactly, man!! The characters, the dialogue and the story was already there, in the manga, supplied by Kentarou Miura. All they fucking had to do was just translate it to a screen. Just animate whatever is in the manga panels, not an iota more. And then just let Berserk's story itself carry the anime. It's astonishing how the anime companies miserably failed at that one simple task

Which the '97 anime largely was save for a few shortcuts probably based mostly on time and budget constraints. It's sad that it appears such a small, unremarkable adaptation is the best we'll ever get because everything since has just been remarkably bad, and seemingly getting worse.

Yep, things have degenerated to a point where the '97 anime is now the best by sheer virtue of the other adaptations being so much worse.

To bring it back around, if Miura did have some part in making this bed, now he's lying in it.

Many anime adaptations of manga are in varying degrees unfaithful to their original source. But there are some that are very close to the manga source. Mushishi immediately comes to mind as one extremely faithful anime adaptation that is panel-by-panel accurate. And it wasn't just because that particular manga series had the luck of finding a good animation studio, and knowledgeable producers and directors who "got" the story. But it was also because the author of Mushishi, Yuki Urushibara, refused to compromise her manga's integrity, even if it meant losing out on some quick short term profits by not allowing some mediocre anime company do a standard shoddy 13 episode anime series that would only cover some parts of first few tankobon and leave out everything else. But going back to Berserk Project, if there was anything that is to blame on Miura's part, then I believe it boils down to this - his personality. Miura's humble, affable personality might have been one of the crucial yet overlooked factors that allowed this abortion of a movie trilogy and 2016 anime series to even come to life in the first place. At a time when firm assertiveness and even harshness was needed, Miura's amiable nature is probably what kept him from putting his foot down and forcing the animation studios to do right by his manga. He could have gave them an ultimatum - either do his story accurately or don't do it at all. When this Berserk Project was still in its infancy, that would have been the right time to intervene and prevent the anime studios from fucking it up. Those anime executives saw right from the start that Miura was a genial mild-mannered man, sensed his weakness, and they took advantage of him. They just rolled over him, free to do with Berserk anime however they pleased. There are some mangaka out there that are willing to play hardball and have hands-on involvement in order to ensure that their manga get a decent anime adaptation. There are even a few, such as Osamu Tezuka and Katsuhiro Otomo, who've went the whole nine yards and themselves personally wrote screenplays and directed the anime adaptations of their own manga. Unfortunately, this isn't the case here with Miura

Many anime adaptations of manga are in varying degrees unfaithful to their original source. But there are some that are very close to the manga source. Mushishi immediately comes to mind as one extremely faithful anime adaptation that is panel-by-panel accurate. And it wasn't just because that particular manga series had the luck of finding a good animation studio, and knowledgeable producers and directors who "got" the story. But it was also because the author of Mushishi, Yuki Urushibara, refused to compromise her manga's integrity, even if it meant losing out on some quick short term profits by not allowing some mediocre anime company do a standard shoddy 13 episode anime series that would only cover some parts of first few tankobon. Going back to Berserk Project, if there was anything on part of Miura that is to blame, I believe it boils down to this - his personality. Miura's humble, affable personality might have been one of the crucial yet overlooked factors that allowed this abortion of a movie trilogy and 2016 anime series to even come to life in the first place. At a time when firm assertiveness and even harshness was needed, Miura's amiable nature is probably what kept him from putting his foot down and forcing the animation studios to do right by his manga. He could have gave them an ultimatum - either do his story accurately or don't do it at all. When this Berserk Project was still in its infancy, that would have been the right time to intervene and prevent the anime studios from fucking it up. Those anime executives saw that Miura was a genial mild-mannered man, sensed his weakness, and they took advantage of him. They just rolled over him, free to do with Berserk anime however they pleased. There are some mangaka out there that are willing to play hardball and have hands-on involvement in order to ensure that their manga get a decent anime adaptation. There are even a few, such as Osamu Tezuka and Katsuhiro Otomo, who've went the whole nine yards and wrote screenplays and directed the anime adaptations of their own manga. Unfortunately, this isn't the case here with Miura

You spoke loudly what I've been thinking quietly. Miura is clearly exploited in all this, despite the fact that he'll be making a few more "quick bucks" in the process. And you made me want to watch Mushishi. I saw like 2-3 episodes back in the days and found it really interesting. Thank you!

I liked the part where the intro misleads you into thinking you might get some fluid animation... Normally people tend to say that if it feels long its because it was so boring that it felt longer, but even though the episode was terrible for all the reasons already mentioned, it felt like 15 minute show. I guess it was just the fast pacing mixed in with very little actually going on. I also didn't realize Guts invaded other worlds